


24 Hours After the Assault

by wiltedneck



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Free Verse, Friendship, Helplessness, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Past Sexual Assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-08
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-02-03 20:27:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1756315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wiltedneck/pseuds/wiltedneck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This poem was inspired by my feelings of helplessness after finding out my friend had been sexually assaulted. I wrote this while struggling to cope with my inability to help her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	24 Hours After the Assault

24 Hours After The Assault

I will not touch as her breath hitches its way  
into snores. We are all too near, now. A   
molecule between friends is too little;   
perhaps there may never be enough stardust to   
safely surround her again.

 

Fragility permeates her fleshy self.  
With skin like tissue paper she hides her heart,  
but sees only the wrinkles and tiny tears  
left by his unwieldy, heavy hands.

Her mind clamors over memories and moods:  
returns, constantly  
returns, constantly  
returns, aware of how she is wrought from  
imbalanced   
systems and chemical loads. Her world   
a-whirl with his mouth and swollen fingerprints and   
unanticipated adrenaline.

Yet she justifies and protests  
her prostrations,  
her former forays.

Unmarred   
and myself so close to the flame which burned her—   
I cannot reach out with flighty false fingers.

Like tall, vaulted ceilings, he towers,  
his severe stained-glass eyes still shine from hers,  
and all I can do is murmur of prayer candles,  
liquid now, but eventually hers to light. They will  
flicker against the grotesque shadows entrenched   
in her chest. And though her hands rustle like leaves of scripture,   
the white noise of bloodlessness restrains, mutes every motion.

 

 

For now I ensure a bed, distractions, perpetual motion  
machines and clean sheets with no  
humanity sunken into them.


End file.
